Emoticons Breaking The Language Barrier

Emoticons, we use them in daily life to convey the simplest messages. Social platforms have been working on the diversity of emoticons for a while now. They even have developed emotions with hijab, along with all race skin colors and are making sure all emotions have an emoticon to be expressed through.

Earthquake can have devastating consequences if not detected at right time. Countries like Japan and Mexico have developed technology that issues early warning on media and digital devices. Now a group of international scientist are working on a project that aims to break the language barrier in situation of danger i.e earthquake. A communication specialist Dr Sara McBride who works with United States geological survey is also a contributor to this project.

“Emoji can cross the boundaries of written language, helping communicate valuable information to people who may struggle to read a certain language… [they] help us communicate this complex threat faster to more people,” said Dr Sara McBride in an interview with BBC news

Founded by Dr, Stephen Hicks the campaign emoji-quake is working to add an earthquake emoji in the Unicode set because under such circumstances every second counts.

The problem with an earthquake,is it’s a very complex process; it’s sort of hidden. It’s not as tangible as a volcano or a tornado. You may have seconds to get under a table or to protect yourself. That can be life saving in many cases. If you send a text message as part of that alert you don’t want too much wording in there.” says Dr Hicks.

The team has come up with emerji a set of emoticons dedicated to climate emergencies/events.

Tweets can be geotagged… we can often then detect the earthquake using social media faster than we can through seismic waves travelling through the Earth. So if we know that an earthquake’s happened sooner, then we know how to respond to it and send aid teams in there,” Dr Hicks told the BBC.

Emoticons is a new language hence not much research is concluded on its effects but many visual warnings like those at the back of card found in aeroplane seats or simply floor or street signs are proved to be understood easier than any language.
“A few studies do suggest that the use of emoji decreases the time it takes to mentally digest information,” says Dr McBride